He was, however, more loyal to himself and to freedom than to Virginia; "and, scorning the settlement from the Ancient Dominion, established a separate government over men who had fled into the woods for the enjoyment of independence, and who had already, at least in part, obtained a grant of their lands from the aboriginal lords of the soil." William Drummond, a Scotch Presbyterian, became the Governor of North Carolina; and the people thought themselves happy in being allowed to manage their own affairs. Their consciences were free, and "the child of ecclesiastical oppression was swathed in independence." *

Planters from Barbadoes, seeking a place for the exercise of their own discretion, had found their way to the CapeFear River; and, in 1666, their colony in "Clarendon" numbered eight hundred. But Sir John Yeamans, their governor, was "the son of a Cavalier, a needy baronet, who, to mend his fortune, had become a Barbadoes planter. He would impart no element of freedom to the prospective State, and "Clarendon" must be allowed to disappear.

But the ideas of the aristocratic English Company enlarged. They asked and received a new charter, which gave them room for an empire. Their jurisdiction now extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific, over the territory of North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and large portions of Arkansas, Florida, Missouri, Texas, and Mexico. The allegiance of the people to the English monarch was to be only nominal. The soil and the actual sovereignty belonged to the company; but the freemen must consent to the laws. Religion was to be free; but an aristocratic nobility was to give character to the civil institutions of this vast territory.

Liberty in Carolina was to suffer further trials. The Earl of Shaftesbury would become the guiding genius of the new government; and he would call to his aid the great sensational philosopher, John Locke, who believed in the power of

* Bancroft, ii. 135.

his own reason to create political institutions from the ideal forms of perfection floating in his own mind, without regard to the actual condition and private necessities of a people so simple, and near to nature, as the North-Carolinians. Shaftesbury and Locke were firmly opposed to arbitrary power, but full of self-contradictions. They desired liberty, but sought it in control by the nobility. They could not sympathize with the simple feelings of the masses; proposed to give them the avails of freedom by governing them; and utterly discarded democracy. Here, in Carolina, representation was to exist in name; but real political power was to be connected with hereditary wealth. Two orders of nobility, earls and barons, were provided for: one fifth of the land would belong forever to the proprietaries, another fifth to the nobili ty, reserving three-fifths only." for the people." The cultivators of the soil were to be perpetually degraded. "All the children of the leet-men shall be leet-men, and so to all generations;" and "negro slaves" were to be in the absolute power of their masters. Of "the Grand Council," fifty in number, only "fourteen represented the Commons; " and their "term of office was for life." And, finally, "popular enfranchisement was made an impossibility." In entire opposition to the first conceptions of freedom with which these experimenters began, and against the wishes of Locke in 1669, executive and judicial power were placed beyond the reach of the people. In a second draught of the constitution, the Church of England was established by law over a population chiefly of nonconformists, who had fled to this wilderness to obtain religious liberty.

This strange mixture of genius and folly, destined to be alternately lauded to the skies and ridiculed as the product of fevered brains, could become sovereign on paper, and in royal decrees; but it could never find its subjects. The rude inhabitants of North Carolina had no use for this consummate nonsense, and would not allow it to supersede their own unpretending government, which sought simply the personal

convenience and social rights of a self-developing population. Long after the vagaries of Locke and Shaftesbury were consigned to oblivion, for more than fifty years, these primitive regulations, “confirmed by the population and re-enacted in 1715," continued to be the law of North Carolina.

Shaftesbury was an infidel; and doubtless, yielding to the idea of a State religion as a political necessity, and, for the time being, an indispensable part of an aristocratic government, he relied upon the future development of the materialism concealed in the sensational philosophy of Locke, and the philosophical scepticism of the age, to relieve his grand colony from what he deemed the superstitions of religion. But his infidelity, with his theories of government, must give place to the heart's devotion to God, and the truths of divine revelation. Even the quaint and humble teachings of William Edmonson the Quaker would be joyfully welcomed to supply the long-felt spiritual wants of the people; and the land of the dreamy splendors of aristocratic despotism and philosophic infidelity would become a quiet and grateful retreat to the eccentric but truly devout George Fox, whose honest searchings of heart had reduced him and his followers to the sternest simplicity and the most sublime self-denial. With characteristic humility, he could say he found the people "generally tender and open," and he had made "a little entrance for truth." More pretentious men would have said the people of North Carolina are turning Quakers; while the candid historian must say the religion of the heart, represented in the very plainest style, showed itself superior, in adaptation to the wants of men, to either the formalism of a State religion or the cool cruelty of infidelity.

While, therefore, we now see distinctly the hand of God. in overruling the schemes of men in the forming period of this State, we see also the same divine plan which we have found elsewhere. The right and the wrong, the true and the false, must come together, reveal their contrasts, and pass through their struggles upon the same arena. Liberty was

to be the grand law of Carolina; but it must show its right to power and duration by meeting and putting down the tyranny from which it had in vain attempted to flee. Pure religion must have a home in the hearts of the people; but it must contend with the wit and sarcasm of Shaftesbury and the blind materialism of Locke. The State would be slave, and group itself with Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware; but the period of emancipation, though long delayed, would finally come. The institutions introduced by the power of wealth and ambition, and sustained by the most persistent energy, would finally give place to those of primitive simplicity and divinely-inspired truth, though the spirit of rejected assumptions of authority and caste would descend through a thousand invisible channels to vex and distress the poor, and betray the proud folly of its deluded votaries.

SOUTH CAROLINA.

The boundaries of States within the territory of the future Republic could not be determined in Europe. Grasping proprietaries and dreaming speculators could fix them on paper, and sovereigns define them in charters and edicts, conceding kingdoms and empires to a few men or an individ

ual; but God, the great proprietor of the continent, adjusted the settlements and the distinct jurisdictions to his own plans. There was room for another State in Carolina on the seaboard. Turbot said it was the "beauty and envy of North America," destined rather, as we painfully know, to become "the plague-spot" on the face of the nation.

The proprietaries founded a settlement of turbulent men in the vicinity of Beaufort, in January, 1670. They were under the superintendence of Joseph West, and were to be governed in the name of the company by William Sayle, most likely a Presbyterian. This first location was soon abandoned.

The grand model of a perfect government had just been

completed by Locke and Shaftesbury; and South Carolina was to be the scene of its complete demonstration. At least the idea of caste, of government by hereditary wealth, of a long line of illustrious families, a splendid nobility, and the deg radation of labor, must introduce itself early, must set up its pretensions at the very foundation of South Carolina; for it was to make its most desperate struggle here against true republican equality. For near two hundred years, it would contend against the most sacred rights of man; but it would be promptly met by stubborn democratic antagonisms with a vigor which promised and finally obtained a triumph.

The people were furnished at once with a copy of the splendid Utopian scheme which was to make them nobles and lords, and secure them indemnity from toil; but the majority could see no use for it. They were not ready. The demands for shelter and bread were too urgent then for the enjoyment of paper rank and artificial dignities. Representative government would commence at the same time that the claims of aristocratic government were set up. They were to battle for centuries, and must face each other promptly. Then there was the "landgrave," consisting of John Locke, Sir John Yeamans, and James Carteret; and there were the representatives of the people. The High Church with its partisans would, of course, be with the former; but, for the present, the latter would show the greatest strength, and govern in their own simple way. But "the aristocracy" would gain one great point. Slavery should be recognized and established from the very beginning. In the other States of the Southern group, this vile institution was thrust upon the people after they began to develop the resources of the soil, and their own energies, in the natural way; but South Carolina was slave from its very foundation. upward. This would at least provide that the planters should be saved from the servility of labor, and make them " gentlemen." It might lay the foundation for an hereditary aristocracy, and, at some future day, realize the splendid ideas